


and if they catch you they will kill you

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Avatarstuck, Bloodbending, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 07:32:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat Vantas is completely fine with his blood. </p><p>He's a whole lot less okay with what he can do to other people's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Republic City, 160 ASC (I)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following meme prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _"I've seen a few avatarstucks, but I am quite disappointed that I haven't seen any bloodbender!Karkat considering cancer is a water sign and his own affiliation with blood._
> 
>  
> 
> _I think having an almost supernatural affinity for such a distasteful craft would do *wonders* for Karkat's self-loathing."_

**1\. Republic City, 160 ASC**

You hit a police roadblock five minutes after leaving the Sweet Brotherhood’s safehouse. If you wanted, you could try to slip past them, but the cobblestones of Republic City are practically an auxiliary police unit. You don’t feel like crossing the wrong one and kissing pavement. 

It’s a good thing your business with the triad is already concluded. They probably won’t be in any condition to pay for freelancers once the blockade firms up and the cops move in. 

You fish your immigration papers out of your pocket and get in line behind a dozen other chumps. The queue moves slowly, which is comforting, in its own sad, shitty way. These cops aren’t in any hurry to slap cuffs on the first asshole whose credentials look a little fuzzy. They’re sifting out little fish like you so that they can go in and spear a few whales. 

All you have to do is keep your head down. Try not to be impatient. Grind your molars down to nubs. Examine the burn marks on the tops of your shows like they contain the legendary lost tantric secrets of the Southern Air Temple. 

Just when you think you’re in the clear, Detective Pyrope peels away from the pack to pester you. 

“I hear the rustle of antsy fingers on residence pass. Why are you in such a hurry, mister medic?” 

The beat cops boggle to see you singled out by an elite metalbender. You are less surprised. Pyrope has the uncanny ability to sense when you’ve pissed yourself with optimism, and takes pleasure in grabbing you by the scruff of your neck to rub your nose in the wet spot. 

“You know as well as I do that Republic City doesn’t allow anyone to operate as a medical bender without a license scroll,” you say. These last fifteen minutes of silence have been trying; you no longer have enough control over your word gullet to keep from mouthing off. “And, get this – I don’t have one!! There is a toilet paper crisis at City Hall. All those bureaucrats would rather wipe their asses with blank certificates than fill out licenses for those of us who can’t shit bribes on command. So it’s impossible for me to be a medic, end of story.”

“Your obsession with bodily waste is disturbing. But I will let it go, because the law does not cast judgment upon the pure and honest fetishist. The law is magnanimous to those who speak the truth.” Pyrope conjures a thin metal rod from her gauntlet, and uses it to drub you in the shoulder. “Now answer my question. Why are you in a hurry?”

“A law-abiding citizen is supposed to jizz himself stupid at the thought of waiting around in a queue? Wow, officer. I had no idea. Here I thought that spilling my splooge on the sidewalk would be a litter violation.” 

Both the beat cops and the other guys in line are swallowing guffaws. You wish you could be cool about that, but nope, you are a chunk of rancid blubber tied up in a sack made of tanned idiot hide. You aren’t good at being laughed at. You are blushing like a five year-old. 

“A law-abiding citizen,” Pyrope says.

“That’s me. You don’t think I look law-abiding?”

You gesture your surrender to the cops – fists closed, not a Waterbending stance – and run a quick mental inventory. You combed your hair. Took a shower. Changed your clothes. There can’t be a speck of blood or ichor on you. Pyrope can pull her stench-guzzling shirshu routine all she likes; this won’t be the day they pull you in patching up scumbags. 

She saunters over to sniff you anyway, snuffling right up under your chin. Loony broad. 

“I wouldn’t know what you look like.” She pouts in the direction of your collarbone. 

“You know what I mean.”

“What I know is that you still aren’t giving me a straight answer! You are the durian fruit of petty criminals. Your embarrassment tastes sweet but your excuses smell rotten. Stinky mister medic: I am running out of patience. ”

You sigh. Vriska is going to pay for telling you that this would be an easy, low-profile job. Which is to say that she won’t pay at all, because so far as the triad food chain goes, mob doctors are barely more evolved than latrine slime. 

“Die in a fire.” You say, loudly, and then drop your voice to a mutter. “I’ve given you about ten different excuses to haul me off by now. Are you trying to get me killed?” 

Pyrope makes a show of looking shocked, then pinches your earlobe and drags you off to an alley where you won’t be the floorshow for a bunch of pickpockets. 

“Well?” She starts drubbing your shoulder again.

“I saw one of their bosses – Han Gyong. He had cord burns and a laceration wound to the stomach,” you say. “Typical damage for someone who picked a fight with a Metalbender. The bleeding stopped but the flesh is still tender and he won’t be throwing any lightning bolts at your boys anytime soon. Now can you please go harass the Red Monsoons and _leave me alone_ before someone pegs me as a cockrat? You don’t want them throwing my corpse in the bay. The pollution’s bad enough without my carcass oiling up the joint.” 

Pyrope rewards you for this by smacking you across the face with her impromptu cane. You are pathetically relieved. Your jaw will only hurt for as long as it takes you to find a bucket of water, and the men in line will think you were sassing her instead of snitching.

“Thanks Detec—oof!”

She knees you in the gut.

“In the future, you’ll watch your tone in front of my men. Otherwise I might forget about our beautiful and compassionate relationship.”

You are too busy gasping for breath to try and keep Pyrope from booting you in the behind. Her gross, cracked toes smack into your ass like a goddamn jackhammer, and no, you do not yelp or give a little hop, that is lies and slander. 

You ponder the long, slow death of your dignity. Then you hear footsteps, and catch a whiff of someone’s terrible jasmine aftershave. 

“Hey TZ. Playing with your dinner?” 

Pyrope lets you regain your balance. When your eyes refocus, you see that her sidekick has come to join the police brutality party. 

“Not at all.” Terezi pats you on the shoulder. “This morsel is catch-and-release.”

“I’m standing right here,” you grumble. 

“You sure about that?” Strider deadpans. “The guy’s carrying an oilskin of liquid. He could be a dangerous Waterbender. I’m so thirsty it’s gotta be a criminal conspiracy.”

Strider plucks the oilskin from your belt, and takes a swig. Joke’s on him – half an hour ago, that fluid was soaking repair into Han Gyong’s unmentionables. You hope that Strider gets syphilis. 

Pyrope leans into Strider like he’s her personal lizard perch. He hands her the oilskin like she asked for it, and who knows, maybe she did. Those two are a couple of choice weirdoes. 

“He’s only a healer,” Pryope says. “He’s harmless.”

To prove her point, she uncaps the oilskin, and splashes its contents towards you. 

You wish that you could prove her wrong. You wish, just this once, that you could raise your hands, and feel the tide at your fingertips, and pull the water around you like any other Waterbender would. But you can’t do what the rest of them can. This water feels still. Feels _lifeless_. And you can no more coax it to obey you than you can whistle for the corpse of your childhood sealdog to come play fetch. 

The water gets in your eyes. You wipe it away with the back of your hand and take back that wish about syphilis. 

“Heh.” Strider hehs. 

“You dogfucking son of a—“

Pyrope taps you gently on the temple. “Clear up your act, and no one will bother you anymore,” she says. “You’re soft, Vantas. If you keep running with this crowd they’ll eat you alive. I’m tired of catching you lurking behind chests at my crimescenes.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You bristle. Like you don’t know. 

What it means is that you are a joke that the Moon Spirit played on her husband. Of course, Pyrope doesn’t know about our handicap. She just thinks you are the shittiest bender this side of the nearest kiddie dojo. 

“Keep moving. “ Pyrope raises her voice. Puts her grin back on. Pushes you past the roadblock. “The law has pressing business here! I wouldn’t want to have to arrest you for loitering.” 

Right.

“ _You_ don’t want to have to arrest someone,” you repeat after her, just in case you missed something. The words taste clumsy and foul in your mouth, like you’re trying to work your tongue around a pair of hundred-year robingoose eggs.

“Healers don’t last in the blocks.”

“Get fucked,” you say, under your breath. 

“Not on the clock.”

And with that, she lets you go, launching you down the street and safely outside the gravitational pull of her and Strider’s combined douchiness. You jam your hands in your pockets and get your ass moving. 

Behind you, the cops continue with their processing work, trying to keep the Sweet Brotherhood from calling for back-up while they get a strike team into position. You tell yourself that you aren’t a terrible healer for selling out your patient, and but the message doesn’t take, because you lies are as awful as you are. Han Gyong is a murderous bilgesucker and an hour ago you were wiping his brow and telling him that everything was going to be fine. Then you turned around and gave his scent to the wolves.

You kick a tin can that somebody dropped on the sidewalk. It loses steam two meters away from you, and fails to make any kind of satisfying impact against a wall. 

You kick another piece of litter. When this one lands, you hear the sickening crunch of rock snapping someone’s bone like a green sapling. 

Wait, what.

The cobblestones heave below you. You wheel gracelessly around to see a Brotherhood goon fleeing from the direction of the roadblock. He’s surfing towards you on a wave of parched earth and broken pavement. Street-lamps topple in his wake while pedestrians are tossed carelessly to the side. 

In a few seconds, you will be one of those pedestrians. The avalanche will rush past you so quickly that your ugly mug will tear right off, if your skull doesn’t pop like a grape under the weight of a falling wall. It will be a relief, you think. You have long embraced the intellectual certainty that your death with be early and brutish. 

Your soul, though, has not given up yet, and neither have your reflexes. 

You raise your hands to cover your face. 

Instead, they extend in front of you, and you feel the pulse of the Earthbender at your fingertips. There are a hundred thousand arterial threads around you in this place, a dense residential sector, but you loop only his around your fingertips. 

He groans and seizes up, frozen in place. 

“I didn’t want to do this,” you say, because it’s the truth. You feel like vomiting. This is the opposite of healing. You’re not regenerating life; you’re sticking your paws in the midst of it and wiggling your fingers around. 

The Earthbender pisses his pants. His heart is beating like a little toy drum. You could make it quiet. It wouldn’t be hard. You are so _sick_ of the noise in this city, millions of beats per minute, all asynchronous, pum-pum-pum-pum-pum. 

You swallow.

“I’m not going to kill you,” you continue.

You stroke the man’s pulse like it’s a frightening rabbit. Slowly, surely, it gentles in your hands, and he turns into a drowsy drooling mess. Maybe if you know him out he won’t remember, and this will all be fine.

Wait, no it won’t. This is _your_ life we’re talking about.

“Have you decided to give up?’ Someone calls out. Strider running down the ruined street with his sword drawn. “Shit, man, if you were going to surrender you could have done it before you tore up ten blocks of road. The clemency train don’t stop at douchefuck manslaughter station—“

The Earthbender drifts into sleep. You bend his body to the ground so that he won’t fall face-down and wake up with a broken nose. 

“Fuck,” says Strider. 

You don’t have the luxury of feeling any triumph at having finally put an expression on his stupid face. You grab his body, lift him up in the air, and slam him unconscious against the side of the nearest building. 

After that, your hands drop – not numb, like you would prefer, but alive with the pins-and-needles tingling that comes from exercising chi pathways that have long been deprived – and you take off at a run.


	2. Northern Water Tribe, 143 ASC

**2\. Northern Water Tribe, 143 ASC**

The warriors come during the dark season, two weeks after your eighth birthday. 

At the time, you don’t understand what’s happening. You see lamplight on the cliffs and think that it must belong to the usual weirdoes. But why would they come now? Don’t they know that the tenth month is for staying home, and keeping warm, and telling stories? That the Moon Spirit drives away the Sun away so her people can rest without fear? 

You scramble home to ask your Gran. This is not the first time that strange pilgrims have come to consult with her, but it is definitely the first time they’ve been dumb enough to arrive so close to midwinter. You bet that you will have to make stew for them while Gran delivers a lecture on how badly they messed up. 

The thought of someone other than you getting in trouble is _tremendously_ exciting.

Inside the caves, Gran is kneeling on a pile of pelts and working on one of her murals. It feels disloyal to notice that she can’t paint evenly anymore, so you don’t. Your Gran is the best and her paintings are the best. They have animals, and stars, and spirits, and sometimes there are people kissing. 

“Gran!” You clamor up behind her. “Gran, I saw lights! Visitors are coming! They’re on the cliffs on the other side of the canyon and they are such idiots, you will not believe it. Their brains are a big blubbery mess of stupid smelly lionseal guts. And whoever was cleaning the guts wasn’t very good with their hunting knife because they punctured an intestine and there is gross poo everywhere too.”

Gran smiles. She is probably impressed by how cool your description was there. 

“Didn’t I tell you to stay inside when it’s this cold?”

“I was way back in the cave entrance! That’s not outside.” You brush a few incriminating snowflakes from your parka. “Did you not hear me say that that there are visitors coming and they are super dumb? Because both of those things are definitely true. 

“If they’ve come to listen, they’re not dumb,” Gran says. “But they are pretty stupid if they think we have much meat to spare right now.” 

You help Gran up and accompany her back outside. Now that you are getting big, you have to do your best to take care of her. That’s why you take charge. 

“See?” You point to the lights. “I told you.”

“You sure did.” 

Nothing much has changed in the ten minutes since you first caught sight of the travellers. The sky is still dark and their lamplight still bobs back and forth along the cliffside, spreading out and then re-forming. You feel a little sorry for whoever is carrying that junk. Compared to the full moon or the the dancing aurora, the lamps look weak, and uncertain of their place in the world. 

“Why are they so slow?” You complain. 

“Because, Karkat.” Gran claps a hand on your shoulder. “City boys can’t hunt.” 

You look up, and Gran’s not smiling anymore.

“Hunh?”

Gran whistles for the dog-oxen. 

“Gran?” 

“Bring me my spear, kitten. And the snowshoes, and the bags of jerky by the cookfire. We’re hitching up the sled.”

Gran’s laugh lines have taken on strange geometries, and your shoulder hurts where she grips too hard. For the moment you forget that you are supposed to be taking charge here. You detach yourself from Gran and hare away to collect her stuff. 

When you return, the dog-oxen are helping Gran pull the sled out from its shelter. The animals do not look happy about being called away from their cozy bone pile to stand in the frozen dark. They paw the snow and toss their heads, chomping at the bridle to get going. 

Gran takes your packages from you so that she can lash them down to the sled frame. Her spear, she ties to her back. 

“Why are we leaving?” You pester Gran, as she finishes the ties. “Are those monsters?” 

You knew that people being around didn’t make any sense. Wow, you really called that one wrong. 

Gran sees something in your expression that makes her ruffle your hair. 

“Your grandfather would say that no men are monsters.”

“But—!” Grousing never does much good with Gran, but you keep trying to make it work anyhow. Your new boots make you look much more impressive when you stomp your feet. “But I don’t want to go! This is the best cave we ever had and I’m not done my picture on the south wall! I’ll fix it so it looks better, I swear, I just – ugh. My pictures are never any good because you never let me finish right. If those people are bad guys, can’t you make them go away?”

You expect Gran to tell you to stop being a brat, but instead she smiles, and gently nudges you up onto the sled. 

“Hush, kitten.” Gran stands in back to steer. “I’m afraid I’m not as young as I once was.” 

You hide your face in the collar of your parka. Gran can’t see from where she’s standing, but the Moon Spirit can, and you don’t want watching the way your cheeks flush hot with shame. 

Gran shouts a command. The dog-oxen lurch into motion and your sled goes racing across the tundra. It would almost be like an ordinary hunting trip if the sled weren’t so light, and the wind weren’t so cold. Gran doesn’t answer any of your questions about why you’re leaving and where you’re going. Instead, she quizzes you about the stories she always tells you during long rides. 

“And do you remember how the Moon Spirit made the stars, Karkat?”

“The way Mom told it? Or—“

“The way I tell it.”

You don’t want to answer these dumb questions. Mostly you want to yell and yell until someone tells you what’s going on. The skin on your face stings where your hood gapes open. You’re hungry and you’re uncomfortable and most of all, this isn’t _fair_. 

Something in your Gran’s voice stops you, though. Her tone shakes like her hands. You think that maybe she needs to pretend this is a normal trip more than you do.

“The Moon Spirit loved looking in her mirror, because she’s beautiful and a girl, I guess? But the Ocean Spirit got jealous because he thought the Moon Spirit should look at her reflection in him instead. They had a big fight.”

“And?”

“And the Moon Spirit got so fed up she broke her mirror in a million pieces. She took the shards and hung them in the sky for everyone to look at. The Ocean Spirit had to suck it.”

“And?”

“They made up later. The Ocean Spirit made the insides of the abalone shiny, and he—“

“How? How did she break the mirror?”

You clutch the sled frame as best you can while wearing fur mittens. The dog-oxen are galloping as fast as they can, and if you’re not strong, the next bump in the path could set you adrift. 

“The Moon Spirit—“ You blank out. Falter. Recover. This part, you know by rote. “The Moon Spirit took her mirror in her palms, and raised them up. The Moon Spirit rolled her palms forwards so the mirror floated in front of her. She felt for the faultlines with her fingertips. She spread her fingers and the faultlines cracked.”

Maybe Gran has the right idea. Repeating the old words is kind of comforting, now that your sled has rushed passed all the friendly landmarks and into the shadowy unknown. You're not scared or anything, but. If you were it would be helpful. Yeah. 

“Good,” Gran says. “Now tell me about the time the Moon Spirit stopped the wolves from howling.” 

“Gran, I—“

A terrible crack rings out through the snowfields, causing the dog-oxen to spook and rear back. You crane your neck around to see what happened. A spire of ice stands where the entrance to your cave was once hidden. It’s backlit by those stupid, swarming lamps.

“Gran, Waterbenders!” You yell.

“Hold tight.”

You are already holding tight. You try your best to hold tighter. The dog-oxen surge forward, plowing snow under their paws and right up into your face. But it’s too late for panic to save you. Your sled leaves a trail, and Waterbenders can make the snow fly faster than any mortal animal. 

The Waterbenders rocket up behind you. They circle around like wolfsharks and raise a ring of ice, forcing Gran to pull your sled to a halt.

The sudden stillness makes you feel nauseaous. You hop off of the sled on unsteady legs, while the dog-oxen collapse into a big furry pile. 

“Gran? Why are there Waterbenders and why are they standing there and staring at us? Gran, please, I want to go home.”

Gran walks like there’s nothing wrong with her knees; like she’s still thirty years old, and slaying dangerous game for the bragging rights. She takes off her sabercat pelt and tucks it around your shoulders. It’s so big that it drags on the ground. 

You’d forgotten that you were feeling cold. 

“Hush, kitten. From now on you need to be quiet.” Gran pulls you into a hug. “Remember what the Moon Spirit said to the Rabbit Prince.”

“I—“ You bury your nose in her shoulder.

“All the world will be your enemy. And if they catch you, they will kill you,” Gran whispers. “But first, they must catch you” 

Gran kisses you on the forehead. You want to squirm, because you’re too big for kisses, but you don’t. You stay rooted firmly to the spot. 

A man emerges from the ring of Waterbenders. He’s old, with cloud-white hair, plus a pair of gross scars across his nose. Gran lets you go and stands to face him. 

It doesn't look like much of a match, to you. Your Gran is wrapped in the skins of her conquests. Her victories are tattooed on her hands, her cheeks, her arms, and she has woven the teeth of her enemies into her hair. Double Scar doesn't compare. All he's got is a parka dyed the colour of old bruises. 

“I told you,” Double Scar says. “You couldn’t run forever.”

Gran takes up a stance with her spear. “Maybe not. Still, forty years is pretty good for a raggedy broad from the sticks, wouldn’t you say?”

“I have very little to say that would be comprehensible to someone of your background.”

The old man raises a funny-looking harpoon launcher. You remember something like it, from back when you lived with your parents in the village, but those days have grown hazy in your mind, and you are pretty sure the old launchers didn’t involve so many gears.

"Then find a simpler way to talk, hmm? We're not getting any younger." 

Double Scar lets a harpoon fly. Your Gran deflects it with a heavy grunt, and surges forward, her shock of hair trailing off behind her. It’s like she’s not even your Gran anymore. Like she’s someone else, maybe always was someone else, and being your Gran was only a layer of festival paint she put on. This woman lopes across the tundra like she was born to it. She leaps in the air and aims to kill. 

Double Scar can bring the launcher up to block, but he won't, because it's too unwieldy. He dodges to the side and gets clipped in the shoulder for his trouble. He's off-balance. Gran whirls around take his knees out from under him. 

For a single, breathless second, you think that Gran can win. 

Except Double Scar doesn't try to dodge a second time. He gestures with his left hand, and one of the Waterbenders slams a brick of ice into Gran’s sternum. She crumples to the ground.

A thin, high noise escapes your throat. Double Scar does a double-take, noticing your presence, sets his twisted face into a scowl.

"So you're what finally slowed her down."

You want to say no, but you can't. Double Scar loads another harpoon and points it straight at your heart. 

“You look exactly like him,” he tells you.

A man in a grey coat and lots of necklaces jogs out from the circle of Waterbenders. 

“Don’t.” Grey Coat puts a hand on Double Scar’s arm. “It’s one thing to be an orphaner; it’s another to kill a child.”

Double Scar’s scowl stays fixed in place. You don’t know who you look like, or what you did, but you are so, so sorry, and you know it was wrong of you to hope that someone else could be in trouble. Everything can be your fault forever, if only they will help your Gran. 

“The boy is _his_ blood. It's plain on his face,” Double Scar insists. 

Grey Coat shakes his head. “You are a great man, my friend. Your righteousness makes you forget your station. A single boy is no concern of yours.” 

“He'll only cause problems. The Council would thank me for it.” 

“And do you think the Council could keep it from the White Lotus?” Grey Coat hisses. The Waterbenders probably can’t hear it, but you can. You are being quiet. You are holding your breath. “Don’t be rash. Avatar Aang has his hands full in Republic City. It’s best for everyone if he stays there.” 

Double Scar spits on the ground and returns to his soldiers. 

The tears have nearly glued your lashes shut. You don’t resist when Grey Coat bundles you onto his sledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((The tale of the Rabbit Prince -- and title of this story -- are shamelessly cribbed from Watership Down. ))

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about giving all the troll kids the same bending as their signs, but then Terezi would have been an airbending nun, not a cop! And I refuse to write a Republic City AU where Terezi is not a badass copper.


End file.
